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Monday, October 11, 2010

Dino-Mite Dinosaurs!

A few of my guys are just crazy about dinosaurs. Although I didn't already have a dino week planned, I wanted to give an opportunity for the kids to have a say. They voted the dinosaur unit down in favor of a wild west week in November. There were a few that were just so disappointed that I tried to work it in anyway. We had a Community Service Helper visit for a day and a field trip to the symphony this week, too, but we manged to work in a few "dino-mite" dinosaur activities.

We measured down the length of our hallway to see for ourselves how long a dinosaur was. (Sorry no pics of that.) We fit an entire preschooler inside an Apatasaur footprint. (Paleontologists and scientists have changed the names of a few dinosaurs and are learning more and more about how they really lived.)

We each took a turn to place our footprints inside the dino print to see how many of our feet would fit.

After we'd all had a turn, one of the friends suggested we trace around a shoe to finish the rest of the count.

Dinosaur block play was pretty interesting. I think we've got the makings of a new dinosaur action movie here!

We made dinosaur footprints a`la Teach Preschool by tracing our shoe and a few triangles from our math center.

We drew dinosaurs freehand or traced unit blocks to make dinosaurs we named after ourselves.

We sorted dinosaur toys.

Our sensory table was a popular spot. I had lots of grand plans like Irresistible Ideas, but in the end, we just used sand, water and props.

We made impressions in playdough and talked about fossils.

Show and Tell this week was especially fun, with all the kids showing off their fancy dinosaur toys!

One remote control dinosaur was really something!

My favorite item brought for show and tell was so simple and gave us a lot to talk about.

Early in the week, we made Pteranodons by making paper airplanes and decorating them to look more "birdlike".

On Friday at recess, we took them outside and flew them.

Through out the week, we talked a little about volcanoes. I really wanted to have the time this year to make a magnificent volcano with the kids, like Teacher Tom did, but in the end, we barely had time to erupt the small one I already had.

When all was said and done, we didn't get to do nearly as many of the fun things that I've seen and really wanted to try, but we had a good time and learned quite a bit.

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comments:

That was "Dino"-mite Ayn! I liked the Dino foot the best too! We did that but I let the kids trace their own feet on construction paper, cut them out and then we glued them into the Tyrannosaurus foot! It was pretty impressive!

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About Me

I have been teaching early childhood for about 20 years. I love what I do---it's the best job in the world!!! Where else can you go to work each day and do art, play games, have snack and get hugs regularly AND get paid for it?! I love to share ideas with other teachers and see what they are doing in their classrooms. Teaching is the best profession---we love to share!